Page 24 of Fallen Starboy

Those were the words I’d dreaded from the second she learned to talk. “I don’t know,” I told her, wondering if I’d have the heart to tell her the truth even when she was old enough to have kids of her own. Wouldn’t keeping her in the dark be better overall for her mental well-being? “That’s not my decision to make.”

“Read me the story, Daddy,” she said suddenly, all the disappointment hidden behind her cheerful front. “I wanna hear about the princess who slays the dragon and saves her kingdom.”

So I read her the story. The words on the page began to blur as I reached the part about the princess finding out who her family was, and I glanced up to see if Yejin had noticed as my words wavered.

Her arms were wrapped tightly around a stuffed animal she’d had since the day she was brought to my doorstep. It’d been tucked neatly beside her tiny body in the carrier when I brought her inside and claimed her as my own.

It was also a stuffed animal I won for her mother on our first illicit, secret date.

The little ragged dinosaur had been her constant companion for seven years now, accompanying her everywhere she went, and not once in that time had she ever left its side. When it needed to be put in the wash, she accompanied it, sitting alongside the machine until it was safely back in her hands. When a neighbor dog snagged it and ripped a hole in its tail, shewatched on as her beloved Uncle Minho stitched it up with his rudimentary sewing skills. It was like a child to her, and she was utterly devoted to it.

It was also the one part of my past with her mother I couldn’t bear to take from her.

But she had no idea that the thing in her hand was a symbol of the love that created her.

A love that was now dead and buried.

Yejin was all that was left of that fleeting moment in our lives.

“Sleep well, little firefly,” I whispered, tucking the blanket up around her and her little dinosaur. I slipped her book back on the shelf and snuck out of the room, careful not to wake her as I slowly shut the door.

I turned around in the hallway, my eyes still watering from the sting of my choices, and stared at the door separating my past from my future.

Arista had been everything to me once upon a time. Everything. And now, all she was to me was an enemy, a thorn in my side that ached when you touched it, when you were reminded it existed only to cause you pain. I couldn’t stand the sight of her.

And yet . . .

And yet, something buried in the deepest recesses of my mind stirred at the sight of her. At the mere mention of this woman, I was confused, aroused, and angry all at the same time. When I heard her voice in my house, it was like waking up from a dream and finding out that what you thought was reality was all a lie. It was disappointment and comfort, a simultaneous blow to the psyche that left me reeling, unsteady.

I wanted her gone.

But I also wanted her to stay.

I wanted to torment her like her memory and actions tormented me for years now.

But I also wanted to tie her to my bed and fuck her senseless.

I burned for her, hot and cold alike, simultaneously freezing in a hell of my own making and combusting in one of her creation.

Fate chose that moment to intervene, and I froze in place as the bathroom door opened and Arista herself slipped into the hallway wrapped in nothing but a pair of towels—one on her head, and one clinging precariously around her torso, barely covering her thighs from view.

All the blood rushed from my head and pooled . . . elsewhere.

Her eyes lifted from the floor, and she pinned me with a stunned gaze, her hand still on her head to dry her hair. “What are you doing here?”

My brain short-circuited as my mouth fell open like a fish gasping for air. “I live here,” I managed to recover spectacularly, hating the defensiveness in my words. “You got a problem with that?”

“Maybe keep your eyes to yourself,” she muttered, following my gaze as it instinctively trailed down her body. “Or do you ogle all your assistants like this?”

The tenuous threads I’d worked so hard to weave around myself, to keep me whole when I wanted to fall apart, snapped. Closing the gap between my present and my past, I stepped forward, crowding her in against the wall of the hallway. My arms became a cage as my palms slammed into the drywall, our faces mere inches apart as she instinctively cowered from the intensity in my stare.

“I’ve only ever looked at one woman like this.”I leaned in until I could feel her breath against my lips. Until my hair dusted her forehead, and I could count the lashes that fluttered against her cheeks.“And she ripped my heart from my chest, stomped on it, and returned it to me beyond repair.”

Chapter

Nine

ARISTA

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